Ricardo Ricco’s comments on Cyclingnews raised a few hackles today.
Asked, though, whether he thinks that he can redeem himself in the eyes and affections of fans in Italy and abroad, Riccò appeared optimistic.
“I know it’ll be difficult but I’m confident,” he said. “The results of the tests that I’ve done on my bike have been good. Let’s see when I come back. In the main, I’ll concentrate on what I have to do on the road. That’s what counts really. If I start winning again, people won’t even remember what happened to me – the same thing that happened to lots of other riders.
The fact that he doesn’t apologise to the fans for cheating them, show any remorse or put in any work to redeem himself or rebuild his reputation grates with me. I was debating this with @John_the_Monkey who posed the question: “Is he disliked?” So I decided to conduct a poll.
At time of writing, a majority – 84% – disliked, and a minority – 16% – liked, from 98 responses. Fairly predictable, despite my attempt to word the question as neutrally as possible. Many of the comments on twitter were pretty angry, such as those from pmshires, Steve_ST, Stumpyrider and mycyclingfan: bastard, venomous, abhorrent, arrogance, taking the pissa and ‘life ban‘ were mentioned.
More interesting was @John_the_Monkey’s doubt that he will apologise: he’s far too sure of himself to worry about what we think. This squares with Ricco’s pompousness in evading the contrite, remorseful attitude and the willingness to make amends that have set a former dope cheat such as David Millar apart.
Then @sprintingforsigns pointed the flaws in my black/white poll: disliking or liking the guy is not the same question as do you want to see him back as a convicted doper. The 2 don’t necessary go hand in hand.…
He has come back from a dope ban and shown contempt for the whole sport by pretending nothing happened, similar to riders such as Vinokourov and Rasmussen. I was surprised that 16% voted ‘like’ and would like to see more comments and justification from this side of the fence.
PS: today was a good twitter day, to quote Stuart Cosgrove I revelled in the thrill of getting noticed somewhat.
